eod of Skye, had composed to the memory of
his seven sons, who had all died within one year? And now the doors were
opened, and the piper boy once more entered. The wild, sad wail arose:
and slow and solemn was the step with which he walked up the hall. Lady
Macleod sat calm and erect, her lips proud and firm, but her lean hands
were working nervously together; and at last, when the doors were closed
on the slow and stately and mournful Lament for the Children, she bent
down the silvery head on those wrinkled hands and wept aloud. Patrick
Mor's seven brave sons could have been no more to him than her six tall
lads had been to her; and now the last of them was going away from her.

"Do you know," said Janet, quickly, to her cousin across the table,
"that it is said no piper in the West Highlands can play 'Lord Lovat's
Lament' like our Donald?"

"Oh yes, he plays it very well; and he has got a good step," Macleod
said. "But you will tell him to play no more Laments to-night. Let him
take to strathspeys if any of the lads come up after bringing back the
boat. It will be time enough for him to make a Lament for me when I am
dead. Come, mother, have you no message for Norman Ogilvie?"

The old lady had nerved herself again, though her hands were still
trembling.

"I hope he will come back with you, Keith," she said.

"For the shooting? No, no, mother. He was not fit for the shooting about
here: I have seen that long ago. Do you think he could lie for an hour
in a wet bog? It was up at Fort William I saw him last year, and I said
to him, 'Do you wear gloves at Aldershot?' His hands were as white as
the hands of a woman."

"It is no woman's hand you have, Keith," his cousin said; "it is a
soldier's hand."

"Yes," said he, with his face flushing, "and if I had had Norman
Ogilvie's chance--"

But he paused. Could he reproach this old dame, on the very night of his
departure, with having disappointed all those dreams of military service
and glory that are almost the natural inheritance of a Macleod of the
Western Highlands? If he was a stay-at-home, at least his hands were not
white. And yet, when young Ogilvie and he studied under the same
tutor--the poor man had to travel eighteen miles between the two houses,
many a time in hard weather--all the talk and aspirations of the boys
were about a soldier's life; and Macleod could show his friend the
various trophies, and curiosities sent home by his elder brothers from
all